Story Vs. Spectacle

So the Oscars took place last month to round off a busy award season.  It’s where the best films of the year are celebrated, being regarded as the ultimate accolade for directors and actors.  However, winning Best Picture does not necessarily guarantee Box Office success, with heavy use of VFX and 3D films usually topping the Box Office.

Admittedly the Oscars are not just about ticket sales, it’s also about providing opportunities to those who win, and even those nominated, and we must bear in mind that ticket sales Is not the only way of gauging the success of a film.  However, box office figures are certainly one of the most quantifiable ways to do so and impossible to ignore. 

Overall, since 1979 when Box Office Mojo began recording box office totals for Oscar nominees, only two thirds of all Best Picture films have actually gone on to be the biggest picture of that year. And in the last six years, not a single film that has won ‘Best Picture’ has been the biggest film of that year.  Comparing the global box office takings with the winners, you can see that there is a considerable difference between those that performed best that year, and the film that won the Oscar. 

Best Picture winners from the last 6 years have grossed significantly less than the top grossing film of the same year.  Source

Disney’s animated film Frozen earned almost $1.3 billion, the highest grossing animated film ever (that annoyingly catchy song and it’s animation were awarded at the Oscars with Best Original Song and Best Animated Film).  However, the Best Picture was awarded to 12 Years a Slave which only took a total of $188 million globally – that’s over 85% less than Frozen.  The last time a film won Best Picture and was the highest grossing film of that year was Lord of the Rings: The Return ofthe King, which raked in almost $1.2 billion in 2003. 

This year’s Best Picture winner saw one of the lowest-grossing Oscar wins in the last four decades, with Birdman, earning only $37.7 million in domestic sales so far.  This was beaten by The Hurt Locker in 2010 which grossed only $18.6 million in domestic sales, beating out Avatar for the accolade.  (These low sales could have had something to do with only being released in 535 theaters compared to over 3,400 theaters for Avatar.)  

Source 

However, there is plenty of evidence to show that winning or becoming nominated for an Oscar can boost sales for films, despite not being the top film of the year. For example, in 2013, the weekend after the Oscars award ceremony on 24th February, two of the films nominated for Best Picture saw an immediate rise in sales, as seen in the graph to the right,  A study into the financial boosts of Academy awards, even suggests that Best Picture means that the film will earn around £12.7 million more at the Box Office. 

Winning an Oscar can also mean that the film has a longer run,  For example, distributor, Sony Pictures Classics, capitalized on Julianne Moore’s win for Best Actress this year by expanding Still Alice by 553 theatres to 1,318 in the seventh weekend, grossing 34% of its running total since the Oscars on 22nd February. 

But if critical success doesn't equate to box office success, then what do people really want when it comes to purchasing that cinema ticket?  Going by box office figures, it seems like people want the ‘spectacle’ of that experience of the big screen.  For example, last year’s top grossing film worldwide was Transformers: Age of Extinction with The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, Guardiansof the Galaxy coming in second and third, respectively.  Up until No. 16, with American Sniper, the top 15 films all feature an aspect of ‘spectacle’, whether that be with VFX, animation or motion capture.  They all feature something that most would consider as beneficial seeing it on a larger screen in a cinema environment.

Top Grossing Films of 2014 Worldwide.  Source

So Box Office figures suggest that spectacle seems to perform better than awards.  Yet in a questionnaire completed by 55 participants, when asked what the most important factors are when going to the cinema, nearly half regarded story line as the most important factor, whereas visual effects and size of screen only accounted for 37%. One argued that,

"I believe story, acting and the direction of the film to be of utmost importance"

With another arguing that,

"Spectacle are good for a short period of time, only a story can fully engage someone" 

However, when asked whether they would choose to go to the cinema based purely on a film having 'spectacle', most said that they would, with one commenting:

"if a film is made to be a spectacle, the immersive tendencies of the cinematic experience aid in enhancing the film"

Another participant commented that,

"I feel that going to the cinema should be an experience.  A reason I went to see the movie Interstellar was majorly to do with the spectacle of the film.  If i had watched it at home, the film would have lost a lot of the visual effects, thereby affecting my full experience of the film.  For other films, that do not provide such a spectacle, such as Drama's, I would be less inclined to see them in the cinema."

Whilst another said that,

"Why else is there [reason] to go other than being transported into a different realm?... a different dimension? It's about increasing / stimulating your sensibility to a range of human, social and environmental factors..."

Although only a small sample of people were asked in this survey, it perhaps suggest that people regard the cinema as a 'special event', which is deliberately there for audiences to experience films in a way that you can't at home.  Therefore people choose go to the cinema to watch films that fulfil this unique experience, which may be a reason why 'spectacle' films perform so well at the Box Office, rather than choosing to view films which don't, such as those who's main focus is on plot line and well padded out characters, as they can be watched at a later date for half the price. 

If you take a look at the iTuns film charts, popular animated film Frozen only comes in at 14, with adventure film, Fury, and thriller, Gone Girl, holding the top two positions.  Boyhood, is also higher than Frozen.  This suggests that people choose to wait for films that are not 'spectacle' heavy to view at home where they can enjoy it equally as well as if they had gone to the cinema to see it, whereas 'spectacle' led films are viewed at the cinema in order to experience it in the best possible way.